Remembering First Love
by Raven Jadewolfe
Summary: What is it about our first true love that enables it to brand itself into our souls for all time? One shot. COMPLETE


**Okay, this came to me after coming across my first everything *wink wink, nudge nudge * and his other half after not seeing or speaking to each other for almost fifteen years. It scared the shit out of me, to be honest, but I was surprised with myself on how things turned out though.**

What is it about our first true love that enables it to brand itself into our souls for all time? Even once you've found your soul mate, what makes them able to creep into your dreams from time to time, and have you view what could have been had your lives followed a different path?

Is it the secretive glances and knowing smiles that were exchanged in a room full of your oblivious friends? Perhaps the addictive way they kissed you when no one was around that made everything bad in your life disappear? Or maybe it was his gentle caress upon your skin that made you feel like a goddess?

Who knows these things?

I've searched my memories long and hard to try and make sense of these things, but the answers still allude me. Some say that memories fade, but can be brought back with a particular scent, a time of day, and various other things.

For me, it's a dark night, the soft glow of the street lamp near my window dulled by an impending thunderstorm. Those are the nights that his scent torments my nostrils and the ghosts of his hands and lips on my body make me burn for another era in my life.

Whispers of our undying devotion murmured during our clumsy, inexperienced lovemaking invade my mind and steal my breath on those nights. When I was young, no guilt accompanied our secrets vows of love, but tonight, with my soul mate slumbering peacefully beside me, the emotion is unavoidable.

Sifting through half forgotten memories of our forbidden passion, his husky voice rings unwillingly in my ear with the words of his adoration. I was his secret love, his secret wife. Everything about us was forbidden, born to two different and yet parallel worlds. The thunder raged and our bodies moved as one so effortlessly.

We had believed that we were made for one another.

We would go our separate ways as the sun threatened to expose our love. My bed was always too large without him in it and I was forever too cold without him to warm me. Countless mornings were greeted with a torrent of tears as I made the transition back to the real world where he was a charmer, always the center of attention, while I was just another 'one of the guys' that he knew he could count on playing football with after school.

I was so utterly devoted to him even though most times he didn't speak a word to me when the sun was shining. I held back tears and kept my head held high when I would see him with the flavor of the week, her hands wound around his neck and his own buried in the back pockets of her faded blue jeans.

I always wanted to rip their perfect hair out and scratch their perfect faces to make them as flawed as I was but I never lifted a finger because it would upset him.

I never blamed him for hanging out with the popular crowd while I was labeled a freak and avoided by the masses until someone wanted to tease me about my frizzy hair, my too big eyeglasses, or point out the fact that I was far from having a statuesque figure. That's just how our lives had always went. We had been doing this song and dance for years.

Under the pale light of the moon, he would kiss away my fears and chase the pain of being an outcast away by making love to me. He would always make me smile when he reminded me that although they might have him for a short time, he was mine forever.

What a naïve little girl I was.

I should have known that our twisted fairy tale would end in tragedy. They always do. That's what those little books leave out. Happily ever after doesn't exist as they portray it and it doesn't take a poisoned apple or an evil hag to destroy everything.

Sometimes all it takes is growing up.

In our case it was a change of address on both sides.

I never even got a chance to say good bye.

Years passed and after I was strong enough to reassemble what was left of my heart into something other than splintered shards, I was saved by one who not only promised but proved that he would love me unconditionally despite my fractured emotions.

I warned him that I couldn't survive being broken again and he hasn't failed me yet. I'm fairly sure that he never will either and I'm grateful for it. He almost made me feel like the other had never existed.

Today my worlds collided though.

After so many long years, I seen the one who broke me.

It had taken a different kind of tragedy to bring us together again.

He was more beautiful than my dim memories could make him. I felt a sliver of my heart slice into the healed part and the trickle of agony was instantaneous. Only the love and devotion to my soul mate could soothe the sting. Too bad he wasn't able to get time off of his job to be at my side. Maybe I should have expressed my absolute terror when I discovered that the other would be in attendance.

True to the ways we'd lived in another life, he was wrapped around another amongst a group of close knit friends while I stood on the outside, alone. I swallowed my fear and painted on a smile to prove that I was calm and collected before I approached the group.

I was determined to not remember.

Too bad he decided that I needed a hug and an introduction to his wife. Of course she would be perfect in comparison to weird old me.

Too bad my heart still fluttered when he smiled at me and told me how much he had missed my presence in his life.

Too bad that in the moment he touched me, fifteen years of unanswered questions overwhelmed and froze my addled mind, instantly making me look like a dumbfounded mute.

Too bad that I felt another tear in my heart when he barely noticed my silence and returned to the conversation that had been taking place when he'd come over to greet me. Once again, I'd been dismissed. Just one of the guys.

Too bad that when our eyes locked for a split second, I could tell he didn't want to remember either.

What wasn't too bad were the thoughts of my own spouse cutting through the pain and warming me back into motion.

Although part of me yearned for the sideways glances and impish smirks that had always been meant for me when we were young, I wasn't troubled when they didn't come. Long ago I had accepted that our paths were never meant to be joined, it simply took seeing him again to be able to finalize it and put it away with the rest of my memories of him.

When our time together came to an end, he sought me out and made me promise that we would get our families together soon and catch each other up on our lives. I am proud to say that despite seeing his eyes flash with memories of our past as we hugged one last time, I was able to make that vow without any pain at all.

Someone once told me that time heals all wounds and I spit in their face because I knew it wasn't true.

I still don't think it is, but what I have learned is that growing up does help. Finding someone who isn't willing to walk parallel paths and instead opts to forge a new one with you helps lots too.

I will always love him, in my own way, that I will not lie about because it would demean and defame what was once the most wonderful about my life. But from this day forward, I can stop dreaming about what might have been because I now know the answer. Do you know it? It's easy.

Nothing at all.


End file.
